Two moderate earthquakes jolt eastern Indonesia, no damage

Dec 27, 2006, 11:04 GMT

Jakarta - Two moderate earthquakes jolted parts of eastern Indonesian on early Wednesday, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

The first quake, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, struck North Sulawesi province at 05:56 a.m. (1456 GMT), according to a report from Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.

The quake's epicentre was about 59 kilometres beneath the Indian Ocean seabed, about 196 kilometres south-east of Manado, the provincial capital, the statement said.

About four hours later, an 5.8-magnitude quake shook south-east Sulawesi province, at 09:54 a.m. (1854 GMT), the statement said.

The epicentre of the second quake was also in the Indian Ocean, about 41 kilometers southeast of Kolaka regency in the province.

There were no reports of injuries or structural damage from either quake.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is prone to earthquakes because of its location along the so-called 'Ring of Fire' - an arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches encircling the Pacific Ocean Basin.

Occasionally, earthquakes bring severe destruction to Indonesia, including a powerful one on May 27 in Central Java that killed nearly 6,000 people. A quake-triggered tsunami in December 2004 killed 177,000 people in Aceh province.